Learning to Live, Earn and Learn

Learning to Live

People contribute more in their communities and enable others to improve when they themselves are consistently increasing their confidence and proficiency in life resulting in improved health, finances and relationships. 

When a person is learning they are able to contribute more to their families, workplaces and community and everyone benefits because growth in one area enables ongoing development regardless of how or what a person is learning. The challenge for educators can be differences between learning for earning or learning for living. For example one person learning to cook may be doing that as a life skill while another person is pursuing a career using that skill.

Large percentages of educators are personally motivated to provide learning that enables learners to improve their situation so that they can become independent, adjusted members of society and live a better life. 

Life-long and Life-wide Learning

In a general sense life-long learning is about all learning from birth to death including all forms of personal and professional development. Life-wide learning has emerged, possibly because in some instances life-long learning has come to indicate ongoing professional development within career and has been aligned to developing further and progressing against defined frameworks. Life-wide learning is more than career and captures all aspects of life including relationships, volunteering and other. Considering theories of flow and peak performance which focus on points in time, compared to life-long and life-wide learning as the depth and breadth of learning throughout a person’s life. With some imagination and some re-modelling, the common visual representation of Flow can be connected with learning outcomes.

Learning to Earn

We achieve skilled, valued and respected education outcomes when individuals, employers (paid and volunteer), educators and government are connected in their views on learning and assessment.

Credentials and Certification

First post-school credentials are typically a qualification that establishes the person’s career. In the Australian context this is typically tertiary education in either Vocational Education and Training via Registered Training organisations or Higher Education via universities. Socrates described all learning for earning as vocational education regardless of the career. A plumber, doctor, hairdresser and lawyer all undertake learning to gain certification, enabling them to earn a living in their vocation.

The formal, tertiary education sector is significantly influenced by the funding available from government and industry to maintain viable education institutions and therefore workplace and career focused education is the primary outcome of formal education.

Registration and Professional Membership

Some education programs are developed to meet industry registration requirements. Commonly known examples are in education, health care and law. Some professional associations require registration to commence work in the industry while other industries do not require professional registration to operate but they may also have professional standards which are typically above the minimum vocational requirement that enables employment. Regardless of the compulsory or not-compulsory nature of industry registration schemes, all industry professional registration schemes include Continuing Professional Development (CPD) or Continuing Professional Practice (CPP) as a requirement to maintain professional registration.

Micro-credentials and Macro-credentials

Micro-credentials are shorter forms of learning that may build towards a macro-credential, which in most countries equates to a complete qualification as defined by the national or regional qualifications framework. While micro-credentials may exist as small components of a larger accredited qualification they may also be non-accredited and therefore not subjected to the same development, approval and ongoing quality assurance that accredited qualifications must adhere to. Even when they are stackable towards complete qualifications, micro-credentials shorter forms of learning and are often used to upskill staff with the skills they need now.

Learning to Learn

While not necessarily accurate at the initial stages, what Socrates described as higher forms of learning, leading to critical analysis and the ability to make sense of the world and your place in it fit within the learning to learn category and develop through enlightened self-interest.

Language, Literacy and Numeracy

Every education system, industry, culture and nation state recognise that the greatest barriers to learning are low levels of language, literacy and numeracy skills. To attain greater knowledge and skills that can be applied to personally improve any situation requires an appropriate advancement and use of language, literacy and numeracy skills to reach the next level, enabling further learning and improved outcomes.

Self-Directed Learning

Self-Directed Learning is forward looking, where you make choices about what you want to learn, identifying any relevant personal or industry requirements and plan out your learning pathway so that you can achieve your goals. Self-directed does not mean you need to learn alone or without support but it does put you in charge of your own learning.

Participative Learning

Actively participating in a project, an interest or a job are examples of engaging in regular activity that will result in learning. A range of studies have been conducted to determine how long it takes to learn, starting with a focused, 20 hours to learn the basics of a new skill through to 10,000 hours to achieve mastery. Regardless of the desired skill level that you want to achieve, immersing yourself in structured learning will increase your expertise in applying new knowledge and skills.  

Recognition of Learning

It has slightly different names around the world, however the act of looking backwards on the knowledge and skills you have acquired and matching that learning against the standards defined in a formal qualification is known in Australia as recognition of prior learning or the acronym RPL. There are an assortment of ways to recognise your learning including self-assessment, micro-credentials and qualifications assessed by education institutions.

Formal education credentials are a part of your learning. Certificates, degrees and badges are presented for the acquisition and demonstration of knowledge and skills at a particular time.